I would like to start this article by sharing a personal experience. Every' sum m er our family travels to the settlem ent o f Palamuse, which is situated 40 km northeast o f the second biggest tow n in Estonia - Tartu.
We visit the church dedicated to St Bartholom ew, first mentioned in 1234. By the way, the church is the only church in Estonia built below the sea level. The name o f B artholom ew evidently gave rise to the toponym Palamuse. We walk in the old church park, visit the old parish school (built in 1873) and now functioning as a m useum , we stop on the milldam, buy the special m edicine - “punsli õli” in the local pharmacy and have lunch in a bar opposite the pastorate. Our visit is a kind of ritual. Palamuse is the M ecca for our family. It is a well-known fact that Palamuse conveys a very special m eaning for m any Estonians.
Palamuse has always been the destination o f most annual excursions organised by Estonian schools. Palam use is on the list o f tourist routes taking visitors to Tartu and South-Estonia. So Palam use may be regarded as one o f E stonia’s business cards.
There can be found tens o f such small and cute settlements in Estonia. But Palam use is special due to one literary occurrence, which took place in 1912-1913. During these years O skar Luts (1887 - 1953), who came from the same parish, the future People’s W riter (such an official title — The People’s W riter o f the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic was aw arded to him on July 20, 1945)1 published his novel /
Oskar Luts w as the very first Estonian writer, w ho w as awarded the title.
During the S oviet occupation (1 9 4 0 - 1991) 14 writers received the title o f the
long story Kevade ( ‘S pring’, Part I - 1912, part II - 1913), com prising snapshots from one school year at the end o f the 19th century.
Luts was 26 years old when the book was published and it was his debut in the field o f prose. His debut did not determ ine only the status o f Luts as a w riter but also had an enorm ous im pact on the Estonian literature o f the 20th century and on the culture in general. Luts wrote a sequel to Kevade, portraying the life o f his characters in several subsequent novels (Suvi, ‘Sum m er’, part I 1918, part II 1919; Tootsi pulm ‘T oots’s w edding’, 1921; Äripäev, ‘B usiness day’, 1924; Sügis,
‘Autumn’, part I, the com plete w orks 1988), creating a peculiar m icro
cosm, reflecting the variety and ever-changing Estonian village community in all its diversity.
Luts presented characters conveying the features o f certain arche
types, due to which they easily obtained the status o f the com m on Estonian language m etaphors and idiom s (like the above-m entioned special m edicine - “punsli õli”). It is easy for the Estonian readers to identify them selves with the characters or com pare their fate to that o f their own. Luts tells his story in a popular manner, tinted with subtle humour, m elancholy and existential m editations. His narrative aims to be “most com m unicative”, reaching out for the “other” (i.e. the reader).
“More than any other Estonian w riter did Luts try to overcom e “the grate o f being different”, which actually seems to be the secret o f the everlasting impact o f his creative w ork,” stated A ivar Kull, who wrote a monograph about Luts (Kull 2007: 265). In the 20th century Kevade was published in 16 editions, in the 1920s it becam e a com pulsory book in schools. W hen O skar Luts becam e 50 years old, his jubilee was celebrated nation-wide in 1937. The questionnaire, carried out during 1998 - 2000 to establish most outstanding national figures, ranked Oskar Luts am ong the 25 m ost popular people o f the century. People chose him the third m ost popular Estonian w riter o f the 20th century after Anton Tam m saare and Jaan Kross.
Estonian literary scholars have unanim ously agreed that the text o f Spring by O skar Luts possesses m yth-creating ability. W hat kind o f myth are we talking about and how does it function, i.e. (or in other words) why has Palamuse become M ecca for several generation o f
People's Writer, but A ivar Kull regards Oskar Luts as the “only genuine people's writer”, because the majority o f the People's Writers w ere artificially elevated mem bers o f the nom enclature.” (K ull 2007: 3 32)
Estonians since the m iddle o f the 20th century until the present day, also interests me.
Here we can see how a piece o f sem iosis o f literature structured from verbal language as the secondary code system - appears in the function o f the regulator o f physical/real space. In Kevade the action takes place in the settlem ent called Paunvere, which is the literary image o f Palam use, and thanks to the genius o f the writer, it becomes the model o f the Estonian village com m unity, charging symbolically the physical landm arks o f Palam use. Palam use Church is not only the church dedicated to St. Bartholom ew. It is the church, which bell-ringer is a certain character from Kevade called Lible, and in which bell-tower one o f the main characters A m o Tali likes to m editate about eternity.
The parish school is not any parish school am ong hundreds o f parish schools in Estonia, but the symbol o f childhood o f the whole (Estonian) nation, like the child-characters Teele, Toots, Kiir, Tõnisson, Lesta, Imelik, A m o and m any others. It com prised both - cruel parish clerks and kind teachers. All characters created by O skar Luts somehow embody certain characteristic features: Teele - a girl with high self
esteem, capricious, presum ptuous; Toots - a restless dodger, but courageous and venturesome; Kiir - shy, nai've, but obedient, faithful and ambitious; A m o - an introvert and m elancholic “philosopher” (also considered to be the author’s alter ego); Tõnisson - introvert, phlegmatic, the conception o f the “ insensitive” em bodim ent o f a typical Estonian peasant; Imelik - a bohem ian rogue (already his name Imelik indicates characteristic features that are weird).
The high level o f generalisation has transform ed the names into metaphors in the general language. For example, the nickname o f the parish clerk was Julk-Jüri, which has becom e a synonym o f a punitive and shouting teacher; on the other hand teacher Laur (a teacher in Kevade who understands children and treats them equally with adults) symbolises goodness. By the way, the biggest Estonian weekly Maaleht has founded a non-profit organisation A m o Tali Foundation, which awards the best teacher in Estonian the Prize o f Teacher Laur. The mentioned foundation also aw ards scholarships to successful pupils called A m o and Teele Scholarships. The given exam ples confirm that a piece o f literature does not only function in culture as text or metatext, but as an institution, arranging and influencing the society.
The dom ination o f the sym bolic space (Paunvere) o f Kevade over the real physical space (Palam use) is also revealed in the fact that the
traditional autum n fair at Palam use at every third w eekend o f Septem ber is advertised as Paunvere fair. Once in a while people really think that Paunvere, like Palamuse, is a real place in Estonia.
The activating im pact o f Kevade, like o f m any other literary works with literary m icrocosm , can be predicted. Cultural sem iotics handle the space as “dim ension which practically unites all hum an sem iotic systems: space is both the context o f all prim ary, secondary m odelling systems, and also the substrate for them ” (R andviir 2002: 143).
Therefore, the relationship o f space o f the observed Paunvere and Palamuse may be observed as inter-textual or inter-sem iotic (between different sem iosises) dialogue, which forms the basis for the em ergence o f a new structure, which I would call ecum enical structure.
Ecumenical structure is a new unity, created at the m eeting o f different sem iosises, entw ining and reciprocally intensifying, estab
lishing the foundation for individual and collective identities, representing the whole culture as text (Lotm an 1990: 303), being one o f its “proper nam es” (taking Kevade as an example: Palam use > Paun
vere > Eesti/Estonia). The ecum enical structure o f culture becomes visible in certain realistic and m ental places, in repeated cultural events (in ritual procedures, customs, traditions).
One o f the m ost typical generation m echanism s o f ecum enical structure works as follows: a w riter writes a text (short story, novel, poem) about his place o f living and/or based on his m em ories), w hich is amplified due to ideological, ethical or aesthetical reasons via a dramatisation, a film, a TV play or music. W ithin this am plification a new structural unity - cultural dom inant - is generated, “which further on has a decisive role in the social, cultural, cosm ogonic and ethic structuring.” (Lotm an 2001: 45).
The possibility and the form ation m echanism o f ecum enical structure - actually not using the sam e term - was studied by Juri Lotman, for whom culture actually m eant structure, in which the dialogue between the world o f com m on nam es and proper names occurs, a constant exchange o f locations o f exterior and interior processes (ib. 153-156). For example, in the article “Culture as subject”
he deals with structures creating m eaning like peculiar sem iotic monads, entering into convergence relationships with other monads, creating higher structural associations (Lotm an 1999: 42 -43 ). In his article “Dynamics o f C ulture” Lotman opens the essence o f the transition process: “an activity” on one level, having a m eaning is
substituted by a m eaning on another level, expressed by activity” (ib.
162). Or in other words, e.g. an episode from a piece o f literature acquires a m eaning (dialogue betw een characters, description o f an event or a character) obtains a m eaning on another cultural level (dram atisation, film ), dictating/m odelling the activity. In the article
“Symbol in C ulture” Juri Lotm an declares that “every culture needs text stratification, fulfilling the function o f archaika” (ib. 222). The ecumenical structure o f culture serves this archaika. The ecumenical structure o f culture has m any sim ilar features with the universal constants o f culture, upon which Juri Lotm ani focussed his cultural- theoretical research, let it be the code text, cultural model, cultural syntagm a or com m unicative algorithm.
From the point o f view o f the ecum enical structure o f culture is relevant the theory o f symbolic interactionalism by the American social scientist H erbert B lum er (1900 - 1987). B lum er’s central theses states that the society as a symbol o f order is a cultural construction (Blumer 1988: 87-88). M ethodological support for giving theoretical meaning to the relationship betw een culture and the society can be found in the w ork o f Pirkkoliisa A phonen (Aphonen 2001).
In addition to the two above-m entioned, there are two more theoretical-philosophical sources, which have inspired me to deal with the ecum enical structure o f culture. Philosopher o f hermeneutic Hans- G eorg G adam er has defined the text via interpretation: a text performs itself only in the relationship o f interpretation (Gadam er 2002: 254);
text is an interm ediate product in creating reciprocal understanding, also com prising certain abstraction as such (ib.). Pursuant to this statem ent the ecum enical structure o f culture may com prise also the so- called abstract text, from which - as stated above - ideology, forming identity is derived. Nam ely, the latter may be connected to the statem ent m ade by Jüri Tal vet in his essay Sümbiootiline kultuur ( ‘Sym biotic culture’) about the inherent ideology o f literature and art.
The fact that “in literature there is no word or image that does not convey ideological judgem ent”, that “any literary expression volens nolens conveys ideological accents, reflecting a kind o f world view"
(Talvet 2005: 51), makes the ecumenical structure possible.
2 Peet Lepik has thoroughly dealt with Juri L otm an’s cultural universals in his m onography “A bout U niversals in Juri Lotm an’s sem iotic context” (Lepik 2007).
Figuratively speaking, any sem iosis emits specific means o f expression by using certain idea clusters, which are am plified into one integral unity in a dialogue. Any ecum enical (associating differences) structure o f culture at the same tim e also carries cultural sym biosis.
The rem iniscent-nostalgic structure o f the text activates the notion o f Palamuse as a real place, but also as the space o f paradise lost. The association is probably triggered by the very first sentence o f the story, which is evidently the most popular initial sentence in Estonian literature: “When A m o and his father arrived at school the lessons had already begun”. Or interpreting it: the best tim es were already over.
Estonian literary researcher Jaan Undusk has studied the sacral structure o f Kevade more thoroughly and has com e to the conclusion that the first sentence com prises two powerful paradigm s generating melancholy: the 19th century fin de siecle and the existentialist philosophy in the 20th century (U ndusk 1988: 30). At this point I want to emphasise that although the text o f Kevade is considered to be m yth- creating, the text itself obtains energy from m ythological sem iosis.
1 have already pointed out above that Kevade by O skar Luts was included in com pulsory literature not long after publishing. In the survey o f school literature published by M ihkel K am pm aa in 1923, Luts acquires the reputation o f the author o f juvenile literature.
Proceeding from that fact one m ight observe one o f the com ponents o f educational canon o f the 20th century literary culture in Kevade.
Kevade as one o f the initiators o f the ecumenical structure in Estonian culture, gained additional m eaning from the dram atization and long stage life o f the play Kevade, produced by Andres Särev.
Professional theatres in Estonia have staged plays by Luts 140 times, which gives every reason to regard O skar Luts as one o f the cornerstones o f the original theatre productions in Estonia. Kevade has been staged by many other producers beside Särev. One o f the most influential dramatizations and perform ances, having a noticeable im pact on the Estonian theatre, was definitely the production o f Kevade by Voldemar Panso in 1969.
However, the new turning point in m ythologization o f “Spring”
arrived together with the film Kevade, produced by A rvo K ruusem ent in the 1970s (script by Kaljo Kiisk and Voldem ar Panso), followed by Suvi (1976) (script by Paul-Eerik Rummo) and Sügis (1991) (script by Mats Traat). All films strengthen the archetypes o f the events and characters in “Spring”, and influenced the further acceptance o f Kevade
as a literary text. Kevade has not only been staged but has also appeared in the form o f a ballet (Ü lo Vinter, Mai M urdm aa) (1967) and musical (Ülo Vinter, Sulev N õm m ik) (1991).
Kevade and Luts have been surrounded by num erous legends and anecdotes, which illustrate the phenom enon o f a text becoming folklore. Kevade som ehow started to represent the whole national culture. In his m onography A ivar Kull vividly describes how Kevade is used in paraphrase. Nam ely, in 1994 President Lennart Meri compared the newly independent Republic o f Estonia with the main character A m o Tali, suffering from pneum onia in the novel. As A m o recovered form his illness, so will Estonia regain its health, said Meri in conclusion (Kull 2007: 65-66).
I have described the transform ation o f one text in Estonian culture.
But every text com prises a specific independent unity o f semiotic structure. O bserving from the Estonian reader’s point o f view every independent sem iosis transfers a part o f its structural energy to the generation o f a new unity. It does not have to be connected only with national identity. It may be an em otional-m ental unity, created thus on the basis o f it.
Figuratively speaking, the new structure, called ecumenical resembles the pillar o f the world in Estonian folklore - the Big Oak Tree as the m ythological image o f the tim e-space unity.
References
A phonen, P.-L. 2 0 01. Kulttuurin pesäpaikka. Yhteiskunnalisia lähestymista- poja kulttuuriteoriaan. H elsinki:W SO Y .
Blumer, H. 1986. Symbolic Interactionism. Perpective and Method. Berkely, Los A n geles and London: The U niversity o f C alifornia Press.
Gadamer, H.-G. 2 0 02. Hermeneutika universaalsus. Tartu: Ilmamaa.
Kull, A. 2007. Oskar Luts. Tallinn: llm am aa.
Lepik, P. 2007. Universaalidest Juri Lotmani semiootika kontekstis. Tarlu Sem iootika Raamatukogu 6. Tartu: Tartu Ü lik ooli Kirjastus.
Lotman, J. 1990. Kultuurisemiootika. Tallinn: O lion.
Lotman, J. 1999. Semiosfäärist. Tallinn: Vagabund.
Lotman, J. 2 0 01. Kultuur j a plahvatus. Tallinn: Varrak.
Randviir, A . 2002. Space and Place as Substrates o f Culture. - KOHT ja PAIK.
PLACE and LOCATION. Eesti Kunstiakadeemia/ Estonian Academie of Arts. Toimetised/ Proceedings II. Tallinn: Eesti K unstiakadeem ia ja Underi ja Tuglase Kirjanduskeskus, pp. 140 - 154.
Talvet, J. 2 005. Sümbiootiline kultuur. Tartu: Tartu Ü lik ooli Kirjastus.
Undusk, J. 1987. M elanhoolne Luts: “K evade”. - Keel j a Kirjandus, 1, pp. 25 -35.
Undusk, J. 1988. M elanhoolne Luts: lõppm äng T uglase ja V isnapuuga. - Keel ja Kirjandus, 1, pp. 2 5 -3 2 .
in Lord o f the Flies M OHIT K. RAY
Andrew Sanders writes in The Short Oxford History o f English Literature: “Golding em erged as a m ajor successor to an established line o f m odernist m ythopoeists. Unlike Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Jones, however, he was not content w ith a reanim ation o f ancient myth; he was intent on overturning and superseding a variety o f modem rationalist form ulations and on replacing them with charged, unorthodox moral shapes” (595). In his Lord o f the Flies (1954), a landmark postwar novel in English, W illiam G olding introduces several motifs which invite us to recall ancient m yths. In this story o f a bunch o f boys, who - on being suddenly cut o ff from adult civilization and thrown into extrem e isolation - quickly slide back to atavism, primitivism, and hom icide, G olding subtly evokes the Biblical myths of the Fall - sibling rivalry - hell as well as the G reek myth o f the two gods - Apollo and Dionysus - representing the rational and irrational life-principles respectively. G olding w eaves various mythical strands into the texture o f his novel to substantiate his vision. Some o f these are: the evocation o f the cult o f beast-god, the perform ance o f the act of hunting as a magic ritual, the beheading and dism em berm ent o f the victim (first o f a pig, eventually o f the boy Piggy) the elaborate Biblical and Hellenic resonances etc. Then there are myths which Golding brings under critical scrutiny m ainly to dem olish. The imperial myth that a group o f public school British boys, like the boys o f The Coral Island, were capable o f creating a civilized w orld in any situation, and the romantic myth that children w ere incarnations o f innocence, are the two m ajor myths that Golding system atically explodes. As a result we have a very intricate m ythic pattern w here the m ythic collides with the
present and m akes the tale not only preternatural and archetypal, but also timeless and universal.
The paper proposes to trace the mythical overtones to show how these add special dim ensions o f m eanings to the novel and how Golding’s use o f the m ythopoetic here reflects his response to the impasse posed by the traum a and challenge o f the post-w ar years, while helping him to dislodge some o f the cultural ‘grand narratives’ o f his times.
In this grim tale o f “a pack o f British boys” in a deserted island - spatially situated in an anonym ous “coral island” in the South Pacific, and chronologically placed in some indefinite future - Golding uses different motifs which hark back to ancient myths, both pagan and Christian, and invite us to recall them in order to grasp the full philosophical and aesthetic im plications o f his work. It is also interesting to see how these two sets o f m yths are telescoped to produce a rich pattern o f mythical interstices.
Isabel M acCaffrey, while discussing myth in Paradise Lost as
‘Myth’ ,argues that a myth is “a narrative resurrection o f a prim itive reality, told in satisfaction o f deep religious w ants” (M acC affrey 1967:
23). In the light o f this definition Lord o f the Flies can be seen as a modem myth on the ancient them e o f the conflict between the good and the evil, in which evil always trium phs in the beginning. The children in the novel can be neatly divided into two categories: the good and the bad. If Ralph, Piggy and Simon belong to the category o f the good, Jack, Roger and Maurice belong to the category o f the bad or evil. If Ralph stands for dem ocracy and discipline, Jack stands for autocracy and despotism. When hounded by Jack and his com pany Ralph cries for mercy, the story at once assumes Christian significations. The m urder o f Simon elevates him to the status o f a C hrist figure. S. J. Boyd has rightly remarked that Sim on’s death is “re-enacting the crucifixion o f Jesus Christ” and his life is “an imitation o f C hrist” (Boyd 1988: 17). In
23). In the light o f this definition Lord o f the Flies can be seen as a modem myth on the ancient them e o f the conflict between the good and the evil, in which evil always trium phs in the beginning. The children in the novel can be neatly divided into two categories: the good and the bad. If Ralph, Piggy and Simon belong to the category o f the good, Jack, Roger and Maurice belong to the category o f the bad or evil. If Ralph stands for dem ocracy and discipline, Jack stands for autocracy and despotism. When hounded by Jack and his com pany Ralph cries for mercy, the story at once assumes Christian significations. The m urder o f Simon elevates him to the status o f a C hrist figure. S. J. Boyd has rightly remarked that Sim on’s death is “re-enacting the crucifixion o f Jesus Christ” and his life is “an imitation o f C hrist” (Boyd 1988: 17). In